Recently the first trailer for J.J. Abrams's newest film (and one of the most ludacriously named films in history), STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS came out and I was all, "Hey, that looks pretty awesome! Hey, Benedict Cumberbatch! Awesome!" But admittedly I know very little about the STAR TREK universe and had never seen Abrams's first film. Needless to say, when I recently saw the three disc collectors edition for cheap at my local f.y.e., I jumped on it. And even more recently I actually watched it. And since it's a movie, here are my thoughts on it:
It's interesting to come to a film with an already dedicated fanbase and not be a part of that fanbase. I love STAR WARS, I love LORD OF THE RINGS, and I especially loved comic book movies. But STAR TREK was something different altogether. "I don't know these characters! I don't know their backstories! What's going on!?!" Actually, I did know these characters... sort of. All I really had to go on was their names and their general attitudes/personalities. And did this ever work against me. What I never noticed in any of the movies from the franchises I listed above was the blatant pandering to fanboys and girls. "What should we name him?" Jennifer Morrison playing Captain Kirk's mother says to Chris Hemsworth (Kirk's father) as he pilots his ship to its demise. They proceed to have a touching moment where we learn that he was named after his paternal and maternal grandparents. What should have been one of the most heartwrenching moments of the film was instead filled with valley girl eye-rolling and scoffing. And it doesn't stop there. Throughout he film we see various characters revealing themselves in ways that feel like terribly unnecessary pandering. It's an interesting element that made me wonder about other "geek franchises" and whether or not they also employ similar tactics. Though I did recently watched THE AVENGERS which is noticeably devoid of such moments. Could it be a product of the fact that one film is written by Kurtzman and Orci while the other was written by Joss Whedon? Probably.
Apart from that though, the film is pretty fantastic! Let's get the stuff you could already assume right away: For one, the film is gorgeous. The colors and angles Abrams's makes use of through the film are breathtaking (apart from an egregious use of lens flares that I'll get to later). Taking place nearly 100% in space, the environment Abrams's and his DP Daniel Mindel (who does a lot of work for Ridley and Tony Scott -- commonly known as visual directors) feels real enough while still having that air of "Wow! Why don't we have that stuff yet!?" Obviously I'm not sure how the original series with Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner looked, but the set designs seems like, especially when it comes to the U.S.S. Enterprise, something that could have just been an updated version of what they had back then. For two, the villain is pretty great. A nearly unrecognizable Eric Bana plays Nero, a Romulan (which may or may not be the race of creatures that Mitt comes from) who vows to take revenge on Spock and all man and Vulcankind after the former was unable to save Nero's homeplanet from being destroyed. One of the scenes I am most familiar with from the original series is one in which Shatner battles (if you can call it that) what is clearly a slightly pudgy man in a green alien (if you can call it that) upon a rocky, barren planet. It's wonderful in the saddest way possible. Thankfully, a sadness filled Shatner fist-fight this movie is not. The warfare between Nero and Spock and his constituents is more a psychological one, Nero waging war with actions that are physically devastating but even more so emotionally scarring.
That's probably what I like most about STAR TREK. From what I can gather, the series have always had a hint (a dash, a cup, or a gallon) of kitsch and camp. It's, like with DOCTOR WHO, what makes it great! It's an aspect I love in almost everything and the balance Abrams is able to strike between sci-fi camp and serious drama is perfect. I wasn't exactly sure what I was expecting, all I know is that I wasn't expecting the movie to be as funny as it was. I was aware that the character Scotty (played by the magnificently cast Simon Pegg) was always, at least for my money, a constant source of comedy with his, "I'm givin' her all she's got Cap'n!" or his "I cannot do that Cap'n!" I wasn't aware, however, of the character of James Tiberius Kirk.
Captain Kirk (played by the ever charming Chris Pine who must take after his even charming-er on-screen dad, Chris Hemsworth) is imbued with the perfect ratio of rebellious, outside-the-lines cocky jokester and serious, "I actually know what I'm doing" skill. It's something the film shows us has been with him from an early age, stealing his uncle's vintage convertible and taking for a test spin off the side of a cliff, and it is particularly brought to life in his interactions with Spock (played by Zachary Quinto). While I'm not sure how STAR TREK fans felt about the casting, Quinto's Spock was everything I wanted from the character. He has the steely, emotionless demeanor in front of his superiors and his crew, but we also get to see how he was bullied as a child for having a human mother. The way the film plays upon this idea of his human-side being a hindrance versus an actual benefit is one of my favorite aspects of the movie. He is constantly stuck in this dichotomy of having to be and act like that a Vulcan is supposed to be and act like while still trying to deal with some of the hardest and most joyfullest things a person can go through -- losing one's mother and finding true love.
Both Spock and Kirk are struggling with two separate halves of themselves. It makes them incredible deep and complex characters and infuses their interactions with palpable magnetism. Whenever the two are together, everything else vanishes. It is only these two men (well, a man and a half-man) as they war with each other while another war is raging inside themselves. It's to Abrams's everlasting credit that he is able to create such fully fleshed out stories for his main characters. Even though I knew little about any of these characters, other than the things everyone knows them for, as the credits were rolling I felt as if I had an intimate knowledge of what made each of these unique and interesting people tick (obviously apart from some of the more minor characters, who I would've liked to have seen more of but understand why that wasn't possible).
And while we're on the topic of the story, let me again praise (I know I'm doing a ton of this) Abrams (and begrudgingly Kurtzman and Orci) for how they justified this completely new take on the classic STAR TREK. The alternate universe plot device is so simple and so perfect that it just left me saying, "Well, of course it's an alternate universe. How could it be anything else?" Inevitably when Hollywood decides to reboot a franchise, there will always naysayers who question why it's happening, why we need new stories and new actors playing characters that are so identifiable with the actors playing them. I mean, years after STAR TREK it was not William Shatner playing T. J. Hooker, it was Captain Kirk, beamed down to be a police officer for a while. "SH!T MY DAD SAYS? More like SH!T CAPTAIN KIRK SAYS, amiright?!" But by not only writing in an alternate universe plot that plays perfectly into the story they're trying to tell and feels perfectly believable in this world, Abrams and company erase all that. These aren't the crew you knew from long ago. This isn't your U.S.S. Enterprise. This is a whole new world. Plus, it allows for splendidly portrayed interactions with Enterprise crew old and new -- and Leonard Nimoy is spectacular. Though his dialogue is filled with many pander-quotes, his conversations with Pine's Kirk and Quinto's Spock are some of the best scenes in the movie that really help build Kirk and Spock's relationship into what it will ultimately be with Shatner and Nimoy. Plus he has one of the most hilarious long-running jokes where he plays on the classically held sci-fi nerd believes that meeting your future self will cause some space-time continuum-ripping paradox that would destroy the universe as we know it. It's those subtle moments of genre subverting humor that really set STAR TREK apart from its predecessors.
Although the film is pretty fantastic, I do have one final quibble with it. The lens flares. Good god, the lens flares. For those of you who don't know, a lens flare is when light is shined directly into the camera lens modifying the image in a variety of ways and patterns. Now, don't get me wrong, lens flares can and have been used to great dramatic effect and can create a sense of realism -- giving the image a quality of being an unedited and original depiction of actual events. In the case of STAR TREK, however, J.J. Abrams goes off the deep end. In nearly every single scene of the film there is at least one intruding lens flare. While Abrams has gone record as saying that he used these flares to create a unique visual system as well as to hide some of the more CGI elements of the film. And while I can see that, Abrams also admits that he watches the film sometimes and in some scenes says to himself, "Oh that's ridiculous. That was too many" and that I can see even more. The unique visual system creates ends up being more distracting and eventually maddening than anything. Many times I found myself getting completely immersed in a scene only to have the movie slap me out of it like Cher in MOONSTRUCK with a particularly egregious lens flare. The same thing happens again in Abrams's last film, SUPER 8. I don't know why he has such an obsession with these flares, but from me to you, J.J. -- Notch it back, chief.
All in all, though, J.J. Abrams's STAR TREK is absolutely fantastic. It reboots a beloved franchise in a way that I have never seen done before and it does it amazingly well. The possibilities that the film opens up for future movies in endless. Not only can they do a riff on literally any story that has ever been done in the STAR TREK universe, they are also able to, as Fleetwood Mac might say, go their own way and create new and exciting stories for grizzled fanboys/girls and newcomers like me alike because of sweet, sweet alternate universes. They also are left in the enviable position of being able to write a part for any of the stars of the 60s series (and perhaps the other series? I don't know exactly how the universes of NEXT GENERATION and the other series work) with relative ease, though if this happens I hope they find other creative methods to do instead of rehashing the black hole plot line. Perhaps the greatest compliment I can pay to Abrams's film is that it made me a fan of not only the movie, but of the idea of STAR TREK. It made me want to do back and connect the proverbial dots. It made me want to find out if and how this story connects to the overarching plot of this unknown franchise. It made me want to boldly go where I have never gone before.
9 out of 10
